Steve Lynch’s Framingham days

Monday

Feb 4, 2013 at 5:05 PM

OK, without Scott Brown, maybe this won’t be the kind of Senate race we’ve gotten used to, but we must make the best of what races we have.

So Steve Lynch was just on the radio, being interviewed by Emily Rooney, who was gamely trying to establish distinctions between Lynch and Ed Markey. The main distinction, Lynch seemed to be saying, was that, unlike Markey, who brags about driving his dad’s milk truck during summer breaks from college, Lynch “pulled on a set of work boots every day and went to a job as a steelworker.”

He remembered working at Framingham’s GM plant, Lynch said. Then, after NAFTA — which Markey voted for — GM opened three plants in Mexico and closed down three in the U.S., including the one in Framingham.

“And Framingham and Natick have never recovered,” Lynch said. Not just the plant’s workers were hurt, but the coffee shops down the street; even the schools haven’t recovered.

Hmmm. Maybe Lynch hasn’t been back to Framingham since he stopped working at the GM plant. Maybe he thinks they still brew Carling beer on the shores of Lake Cochituate. Maybe he doesn’t know about Boston Scientific, and EMC and Genzyme and the MetroWest economy. If memory serves, unemployment here has been as low as 2.3 percent in the years after General Motors left town. Maybe he doesn’t know that MetroWest has Massachusetts’ second highest payroll (after Boston/Cambridge). Maybe he doesn’t know our schools are among the best in the country. You can bet Ed Markey knows.

Or maybe Lynch figures if it’s not a union job, it’s not really a job at all. I look forward to giving him the chance to expand on what he knows about his would-be constituents in a part of the state where’s he’s pretty much a stranger.

Rick Holmes

OK, without Scott Brown, maybe this won’t be the kind of Senate race we’ve gotten used to, but we must make the best of what races we have.

So Steve Lynch was just on the radio, being interviewed by Emily Rooney, who was gamely trying to establish distinctions between Lynch and Ed Markey. The main distinction, Lynch seemed to be saying, was that, unlike Markey, who brags about driving his dad’s milk truck during summer breaks from college, Lynch “pulled on a set of work boots every day and went to a job as a steelworker.”

He remembered working at Framingham’s GM plant, Lynch said. Then, after NAFTA — which Markey voted for — GM opened three plants in Mexico and closed down three in the U.S., including the one in Framingham.

“And Framingham and Natick have never recovered,” Lynch said. Not just the plant’s workers were hurt, but the coffee shops down the street; even the schools haven’t recovered.

Hmmm. Maybe Lynch hasn’t been back to Framingham since he stopped working at the GM plant. Maybe he thinks they still brew Carling beer on the shores of Lake Cochituate. Maybe he doesn’t know about Boston Scientific, and EMC and Genzyme and the MetroWest economy. If memory serves, unemployment here has been as low as 2.3 percent in the years after General Motors left town. Maybe he doesn’t know that MetroWest has Massachusetts’ second highest payroll (after Boston/Cambridge). Maybe he doesn’t know our schools are among the best in the country. You can bet Ed Markey knows.

Or maybe Lynch figures if it’s not a union job, it’s not really a job at all. I look forward to giving him the chance to expand on what he knows about his would-be constituents in a part of the state where’s he’s pretty much a stranger.

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